


Sick Of the Chase

by likeromeoandjuliet



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Hopeful Ending, If Jughead Was Betty’s Emergency Contact, but they’ll get there, it’s not all pretty and fixed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-12 04:26:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29379186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeromeoandjuliet/pseuds/likeromeoandjuliet
Summary: When his phone rings, he guesses it’s Jessica being the bigger person again and calling to ask if they can talk it through and figure out what isn’t working and how they could make it make it work. Lord knows his credit has run out.“Hello?”“This is the Sibley Memorial Hospital, Washington. Is this Forsythe Jones?”“This is him, yes. How may I help you?” He questions, confused. Why the hell would a hospital be calling him?“We are calling because of a patient admitted here, you’re her emergency contact.” Her. “Elizabeth Cooper.”It’s as if he’d been dropped six feet under in half a second. Her name coming out of a stranger’s mouth. Elizabeth. He swears you could have heard a hair pin drop in that moment. The world stops, not even traffic in NYC keeps moving.“Are you sure I’m her emergency contact?” He manages to question, the words are difficult to come out, and he can’t help but question how in the world after all this time, he’s her emergency contact. He didn’t even know he used to be. That he was her person in life or death situations.OrIf Jughead had been Betty’s emergency contact after she was abducted by the TBK
Relationships: Betty Cooper & Jughead Jones, Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 50
Kudos: 268





	Sick Of the Chase

_ “Can the killer in me  
Tame the fire in you?  
I know there's something waiting for us  
I am sick of the chase  
But I'm stupid in love  
And there's nothing I can do  
And there's nothing I can do” _

**_ Killer, Phoebe Bridgers  _ **

  
He’d been up all night trying to write. It feels like a pathetic sentiment. _Trying_. As if it was no longer in his rooster of abilities to do the one thing he’s done since he could pick up a pen. 

Admittedly, and he’s well aware of how absolutely pretentious it is, there is something poetic about the scattered pages and the glass filled with what is his last bottle of the expensive whiskey Jessica had bought for his birthday. He’s already dreading the day it ends and at the rate it’s going, it won’t last long. But still, the empty page mocks him and he had committed to writing _(whatever it is he’s writing, he’s unsure…well, he thinks he has an outline, or he thought he had an outline last night_ ) on the typewriter. And it’d suit his tortured writer aesthetic if it didn’t remind him of  _ her. _

Ah, yes, the elusive  _ her _ . The universe hates him because since the last book had been published, his first, the typewriter had been the only place he’d been able to sit and think clearly. He had also accidentally broken his computer (he punched it) and he can´t bring himself to turn on the old one, because there’s too many word documents about  _her_. _Her_. The one he lost. 

Jessica is probably dumping him soon, he thinks. He  _knows_. Because she told him, as she packed up to stay at Haley’s again. She hadn’t said it with as much finality as this time so he thinks this time might be permanent. And if he were on his right mind, he would be trying to apologize for blowing her off again and for forgetting to pay rent. But he’s not, because he’s here. 

It’s morning. And he’s been sat in front of his desk ever since she left, and he’s actually done a great job of not getting wasted today so he’s taking a win where he can get one. Maybe later, he’ll go to bar but that belongs to a different day. He’s convinced of it. 

Either way, he decides to finish his glass, take a shower and take a break from staring at the blank page. Another win. At the very least, he can say he showered today. 

His legs feel sore when he stands and he really can’t feel his ass, but that’s what happens when you’re a writer with writer’s block. So, he ambles on to the bathroom, sighs when he looks at himself in the mirror. He really needs to get his shit together and find a way to write or else, he’s toast. No girlfriend, soon no apartment and whatever weight  _ The Outcast  _ held is lost forever. 

But he pushes through the self pity, gets in the shower and dreams up a way of writing a decent story, or a story that would give him time to write if the premise was good enough for the publishers to believe he could write something marketable. Or else, he’d really be a one hit wonder. It’s a  wonder he ever was a wonder the first time around. He still can’t wrap his mind around it.

When his phone rings, he guesses it’s Jessica being the bigger person again and calling to ask if they can talk it through and figure out what isn’t working and how they could make it work. Lord knows, his days of charming his way out of problems with her ended a while ago. His credit is out. 

“Hello?”

“This is the Sibley Memorial Hospital, Washington. Is this Forsythe Jones?”

“This is him, yes. How may I help you?” He questions, confused. Why the hell would a hospital be calling him?

“We are calling because of a patient admitted here, you’re her emergency contact.”  _Her_.  “Elizabeth Cooper.”

It’s as if he’d been dropped six feet under in half a second. Her name coming out of a stranger’s mouth.  Elizabeth. He swears you could have heard a hair pin drop in that moment. The world stops, not even traffic in NYC keeps moving. 

“Are you sure I’m her emergency contact?” He manages to question, the words are difficult to come out, and he can’t help but question how in the world after all this time, he’s her emergency contact. He didn’t even know he used to be. That he was her person in life or death situations.  


“Mr. Jones, I think it would be best if you could come here as soon as you can and if you can’t, then you should find someone who can.”

“Right. Can you- can you please tell me what happened?” He doesn’t want to know, the moment he asks the question. He doesn’t want this to be real. 

“I’m afraid that under hospital policy, I can’t say anything until I can confirm your identity. But we need someone here as soon as possible.”

He lets out a shaky breath. “Can you tell me how bad it is?”

“She’s still under examination, Mr. Jones. There really isn’t much I can tell you.”

“Of course. Okay. Thank you.” 

He sits for a moment on his toilet and he can’t even fucking will himself to cry. He must be hallucinating there is just no way. What if this is it? He knows he’s spiraling, but as he sits there with the possibility of Betty being hurt or worse, it all rushes into him like a tidal wave. 

The last time they’d talked hadn’t been great. He’d been drunk and had called her, bitterness in his words and for the life of him, he doesn’t know much of what he does anymore, who he is. But he can’t have the last words he said to Betty be  ‘how could you do this to me? How could you destroy everything?’.  That had been two years ago. And they hadn’t spoken since because he had blocked her number. 

The only thing he’s certain ofthere’s never a thing he wouldn’t do for Betty Cooper, when it came down to the wire. He springs into action, hastily packs a bag with whatever clean clothes he can find and sets on finding a plane ticket. He doesn’t know how much time he can afford. 

He hates to think it and he longs for a drink in that moment and it only makes it worse. Does she have time? Do they still have time to say everything they had held back before? It’d been so long, too long since they’d spoken like they used to. He can barely remember who he used to be, but he does remember her and everything she still is to him, even if anger takes over him. It’s easier to be angry than it is to be heartbroken. And she had broken him. 

It’s on his way to the airport that he remembers that if he had been her emergency contact then that meant Alice didn’t know. He doesn’t know how stable their relationship is, Betty and Alice. He’s never fully trusted Betty’s mother after everything she had put her through. But he thinks that if Betty’s hurt, she should know. 

He searches for her number and doesn’t hesitate to call because maybe Alice is closer than he is. He can’t bear the thought of Betty alone. 

“Jughead?” She sounds surprised to hear from him and he can’t blame her. It’s been almost seven years.

“Alice, I wish I wasn’t calling you. But something happened to Betty.” Maybe he could’ve done a better job at handling that, but he can’t think, his brain is all scrambled and an imagine of Betty in a hospital bed tightens his chest. “They called me from Washington. She’s in the hospital. They wouldn’t tell me anything else.”

“Oh god…” He hears from the other side of the line.

“I’ll text you the hospital. I’m getting on a flight right now.” 

He ends the call before anything else gets out because he doesn’t know how to handle it, he doesn’t know how to hear Alice’s pain because it’ll only make him feel worse. And he knows it’s selfish, god, he knows it so well, but this is Betty. His Betty. Even though she hadn’t been his in years or maybe she never was. But it’s still her and she’s hurt. And he doesn’t know how to atone for that and how long it’s been since they’ve been  them. 

So, the money on his bank account goes from three digits to two and he gets on a plane to an uncertain near future, with an ache in his chest he always seems to feel when it comes to her.

Alice gets there first. He’s surprised by the hold she has on him by the time he gets close enough to her, but it feels a little like relief, the tight embrace she wraps him up in. She’s been crying, he can tell, and she’s holding back tears as she sits him down to tell him what happened to Betty.

“Betty…was kidnapped. A case she’d been working on led her to something and our Betty went in without backup and she...stayed there for two weeks where that monster did god knows what to her, Jughead.” He doesn’t miss the ‘our Betty’ she throws in there and it’s another knife to his heart. “She’s under observation and she was unsettled so they had to sedate her, so she wouldn’t make her wounds worse.”

“Her wounds?” He questions softly. 

Alice breathes out shakily, squeezing his hand. “They think he had her tied up. And there were cuts all over her body. She’s also heavily dehydrated and malnourished. She’s in bad shape, Jughead. My baby.” Alice starts crying, sobbing and the only thing he can do is wrap her in an embrace like she had when he first arrived. 

“Can I- Can I see her, Alice?” 

•

The image of Betty Cooper on a hospital bed, wired up, will haunt him for the rest of his life. He thinks of how, during their time in Riverdale, she had never been in the hospital. But he had. And Betty had suffered as he lied, beaten up, almost having his life taken by the Ghoulies. How had she done this? How had she seen him fighting for his life, hurt and not given up? He feels sick, seeing her there, vulnerable and defenceless. And he feels powerless because there’s nothing he can do. 

The doctors told them she’d recover. Physically, at least. She would be fine. Psychologically, it’d be another ballpark. For all the trauma they’d endure, of course the world would throw more on Betty Cooper. The FBI had talked to them to, informing them of how Betty had even gotten to TBK’s lair. Yet another serial killer to add to the list. 

Betty is training for the FBI and this is the first he’s hearing of it. He’s not entirely surprised that she is and he’s also not surprised she hadn’t called for backup and followed a hunch. He guesses the warrants and protocols didn’t go over well with her. It brings him a small fond smile at the thought. Stubborn Betty, always right when it comes to her gut feelings. And unstoppable once she knows what to do. 

The room is quiet. And then he hears his own sobs. He can’t recall how he’d fallen to his knees, shaking by her hospital bed while she sleeps. But he stays there and it’s like the ticking time bomb had finally gone off and he’s forced to face everything he’s lost and everything she did and that he did and what they became. 

“Betts-“ He sobs. “What happened to us?” The words are hushed, he feels like he’s breaking apart at the seams. 

Betty’s alive. And Betty had suffered through something horrific again. How could the universe be so hell bent on destroying her? What did she do in her life that required that much pain? His thoughts are scattered. The memories come back to him at the sight of her again. Her betrayal, the pain in his chest when she told him, the slash across his heart when she confirmed his worst fear, her desperate lips and desperate hands and his desperation to feel something other than the pain of it all. 

They weren’t supposed to end like that. They deserved happiness. And she had gone and destroyed them. Abandoned him just like everyone else. Left him and for what? What safety did she want that he could not give her? 

He’s so angry they don’t have the life they dreamed of, all because of her. Because she kissed Archie. 

And because he pushed her away without even trying, validated by the distance, by her open heart just waiting for him to decide what to do, to either cut her open or leave her there. 

But as he pulls up a chair, grabbing her hand, seeing her so helpless in a hospital bed, having been tormented by another serial killer, he thinks of what it would have been like to lose her, truly, forever. 

Jughead can’t lose her. Not like this. He can live to lose her and have her be out in the world, maybe choosing happiness, maybe just putting herself in danger but always with the possibility of her being in the city sometime, how maybe they’d see each other and grab a coffee. And she’d tell him about her cases and she’d anchor him down when he tells her about his writer’s block and his failures. Her belief in him still as strong. 

He misses that. Having someone who believes in him so completely and with no reservations. 

_Would you believe in the person I am now, Betts? Washed up drunken writer, one hit wonder who can’t even pay his bills? Would you believe I could be something more than I am?_

•

Jughead isn’t prepared for when she wakes up. After hours of waiting, he expects himself to be overjoyed, relieved but nothing prepares him for the panic he feels when Alice excitedly tells him she’s waking up. Nothing prepares him for how he can’t stop himself from bolting out of the room and pacing in front of the elevator, debating wether or not to leave. 

She doesn’t need him here. What good would he do? What were they to each other? Would she even care that he’s here and that he broke down by her bed? And if he left, then it’d be over, they could go on with their lives. Betty doesn’t need to know he was here and maybe she’s better off not knowing. Wouldn’t he make it worse for her? 

What if she wakes up and feels nothing for him? What if he’s just a memory?

What if she wakes up and remembers every other thing that happened in Riverdale and it reminds her of her last two weeks? 

What if she forgot all about their love and he’s just the past? 

What if she sees him and all she sees is a failure? 

But Alice, Alice pulls him out of it. As the nurses are checking on Betty, she comes up to him and grabs his face with both hands and looks at him with a look that makes him feel like a little kid. 

“You need to snap out of this, Jughead. I don’t care what you think she needs, I know my daughter still cares about you and you’re here. You flew here for her because you care about her just as much you once did.” He gulps, his eyes wide. “I talk to FP and he’s worried about you, you don’t talk to him much and lord knows I know what that’s like because my daughter was held captive for two weeks and I didn’t worry about not hearing from her because we go longer without talking nowadays. But the two of you, you know each other and I know, in my heart, there’s no one who knows Betty better than you do, even now. So, you’re going to go back with me or I’ll drag you in.” 

•

Her eyes are as green as they were and it strikes him how much he’s missed the warmth in them. They watch him as he comes closer as if assessing what the next move his, but still with kindness in them. She wasn’t as agitated as she’d been when she first woke up and the doctors had run their tests, but she looked exhausted now, tired eyes. 

“Hey, Betts.” He murmurs, setting his jacket on the back of the chair before sitting. 

“Jug.” She breathes out, like she can’t quite believe he’s there. She’s still a little weak from the sedative and the exhaustion, you can tell and it makes his chest ache. “How are you here?” 

“I’m your emergency contact.” 

Her eyes widen with realisation. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? Betty no.”

“I changed it when we were still...”  Together.  “I didn’t trust...my mom to, you were the only one I...well....I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, it’s ok.” He shakes his head. “How are you feeling?” 

He’s sure he sees a thousand images cross her mind. “I’m ok, I think. There’s too many pain meds probably.” She manages a weak smile and then something else that he sees, the apprehension, as she looks down at their hands. “Why are you really here?” 

“I told you.” His words are whispered, as if he can’t bear to tell her. As if, if he tells her, breaks the wall he’d so carefully built around all things Betty, he’ll be the one to crack.

She doesn’t push him, he sees her somber expression and his throat tightens. What is this? This, them. His memories of them are still tender. It’s the part he hates most, how after being crushed by her hand, he still thinks of how it feels to be loved by her, stills feels it. What it’s like to have Betty believe in him. And maybe, now, in his life, he’d been thinking back to that feeling. The feeling that maybe Betty saw something in him that he never had. And he was scared of proving her wrong now. 

Silence creeps like an old friend who is now a stranger and Jughead doesn’t know what to do, how to talk to her. Before, he’d been hell bent on keeping his anger close to him, to let the resentment fester like a parasite. Clinging to it was the one thing that kept him from losing it. He doesn’t know if he wants his fears to be right. That, in the end, her choice would be Archie and that he’d be left as a second best again. That somehow his understanding of their love and all that it had happened to them so close to his heart wasn’t as monumental for her. 

He resists letting the look on her face be what he feels it is. Pain. For him, for herself, for what they were and what they lost. Who they are now. 

“Betts...” He calls out softly to make her look at him. But he doesn’t know what to say to he doesn’t. And as she looks away again, closing her eyes, he feels the lump in his throat grow larger. 

“I thought about this moment so many times, Jug.” She breathes out, her soft voice startling him out of his own thoughts. “And after your phone call, I kind hoped it wouldn’t. Cause it’d hurt too much.” Her confessions tugs at his broken pieces. It’s been so long. And he’d been angry and heartbroken for so long. “Seven years. I tried to talk to you, I tried to...make sense of why we blew up the way we did, why we never talked. God, Jughead...” Her breathing is shaky, she wipes a stray tear that is falling down her cheek. “I even tried to be angry at you for calling but I couldn’t. Because you were right, I blew it up and I hurt you. And now you’re here, because I made a stupid mistake again. I keep fucking things up for you and you deserve to forget about me.” He thinks he’s never seen her so defeated, even throughout high school. She looks spent, exhausted as if the weight of the world is on her shoulders. “And now I didn’t fuck up just one person’s life. The killer escaped and now he might be out there hurting other people because I fucked up.” 

The sight of her crying washes another wave of pain over him and he doesn’t resist the instinct to wrap her up in his arm as she sobs against him. 

“You’re here.” She says, sniffling. “Jughead.” 

“I’m here.” He repeats and she looks up at him, as if confirming the truth to his words. “I’m here.” He whispers against her hair, because he doesn’t know what to do for them anymore in this moment. 

But her body goes limp in his arms and he looks down, Betty’s unconscious. Bile rises to his mouth and he presses the emergency buttons. 

“Betty, wake up, come on, we’re not done, okay, please, oh my god.” 

They pull him away from her, push him out of the room and he collapses on the floor. Why can’t he ever say what he wants to say when he has the chance to say it? They can’t take her from him. Please, dear god, don’t let them take Betty from him. He’s sick of being angry, of blaming everything on her mistakes of when she was an eighteen year old girl. God, they deserve better. Better than an ending like this. 

He gets up with newfound resolve and tried to burst into the room but Alice stops him, wrapping her arms around him to keep him in place even as she cries. 

“Let me go! Let me go!” He screams. “Alice, stop this!” His voice doesn’t sound like him, he doesn’t recognise the sounds falling from his lips, something desperate, animalistic pouring out of him like blood on the hospital tiles. Alice keeps holding him, his breathing heavy, like he can’t breathe anymore and it’s all too much to bear. “She has to know- I love her. I wanna tell her I love her.” 

“She knows, Jug. She knows.” Alice murmurs in his ear as he cries, finally gripping her body as she holds him on the floor. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” 

•

Betty’s in surgery for three hours. And he wonders how she had taken 36 hours of him almost dead in a bunker. But he knows the answer. Betty’s stronger than he is. How she can still worry for someone else even when her own pain is excruciating. It’s unfair that one person carries so much pain. He forgives her. He doesn’t care. He forgives her. She deserves some peace and he can give it to her. She may have pulled the trigger but he hadn’t tried to stop the bleeding. Had ignored it. Let it pool around. 

She’s asleep for the night, after she’s brought to her room. And Jughead doesn’t leave her side, even when Alice insists he should go to her hotel and get some sleep. He refuses to. He knows she’ll be fine. What she had was treatable, they just hadn’t picked up on it the first time around. Her internal bleeding. But he can’t sleep, he wants to sit in the most uncomfortable chair he’s sat on in his life and watch her sleep, watch her breathe and hear the beep of the machine monitoring her heart. 

“She’s gonna be okay?” He questions the nurse that comes to check on her, in the middle of the night. 

“She will be.” She nods. “She suffered a lot.” She comments softly. “She’ll need you.”

“I’m not sure she’ll want me.” 

“She said your name when she first came. She was delirious but she did. Jughead, right?” He nods, unsure of how to take the nurse’s comment. “I understand that there’s difficult history between you, sometimes you can’t help but overhear, sorry.” She smiles softly, as she continues doing her job and he offers a soft laugh. “But a piece of advice? Wasting time won’t do anyone any good. Take it from an old woman who has seen too much in these walls.” 

The kind woman smiles softly before exiting the room and he sits there with her words. She is right. He’s unsure of what capacity not wasting time takes but he’s sure he doesn’t want to waste it anyway. 

Betty looks somewhat peaceful and he wishes for everything to be that way from now on. He knows, after this horrific day, he won’t leave her like they had walked away from each other. He also knows her recovery won’t be a walk in the park and that she’ll be stubborn and resist stopping, knows she’ll want to chase after the clues and find her abductor. His stubborn girl, still as stubborn as ever. 

Maybe they can talk. Maybe they can do something to fix this. To rebuild what was once broken by the both of them. 

When she wakes, this time, he stays rooted in his place, holding her hand. Alice is at her hotel, the sun is rising outside and Betty’s eyes open into his. 

“You’re still here.” She whispers and he brings her hand to his lips, kissing her skin with tenderness, letting her hand rest against his face. “Juggie?”

He breathes out softly at the nickname. “Yeah, Betts?”

“Please don’t go.” 

He shakes his head. “I won’t. Not getting rid of me this time around, special agent Cooper.” The small smile on her face is enough for his body to let go of some of the tension he’s held for the day and he leans in closer to her face. “We’re gonna fix this, yeah? Everything. No matter how long it takes or what happens tomorrow or the day after.” 

Betty holds back tears, nodding her head, he can see the relief evident on her face, as if she’d been expecting him to leave. “Jug, I love you.”

He smiles softly, because he knows, knows it inside him like a truth that’s close to his heart. So, he leans in to press a kiss to her forehead. “I love you too.” 

“Shit.” He hears her soft gasp and furrows his brows. “My cat.”

“Your cat? That’s what you’re thinking about right now? In the middle of our moment?” 

“I was gone for two weeks. I hope someone took care of Toffee.”

“I’m sure they took care of...Toffee? Betts, that’s a terrible name.”

“Coming from the man who named his dog Hot Dog. Miss me with that bullshit, Forsythe.” She bites back and he laughs softly at her soft playfulness. He hadn’t realised how much he had missed lighter moments with her. “You’ll love her though.”

“Yeah?” He doesn’t miss the implication that he’ll meet her cat. 

“Yeah, she eats like a pig. Reminds me of you.” 

**Author's Note:**

> I’m sad. And I need my children to get back together like now. 
> 
> As a person who seeks constant validation, I need you to comment and scream at me. Please.


End file.
